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As Trump Takes the Wheel, Big Corporations Extricate From DEI, Climate Programs
Epoch Times, ^ | January 20, 2025 | Kevin Stocklin

Posted on 01/21/2025 9:46:07 AM PST by george76

‘A lot of companies got way out over their skis on this, but the law hasn’t changed,’ Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said..

After years of applying the progressive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ideological framework to their corporations, executives appear to now be realizing that these programs could be driving their companies into a legal and financial wall.

The past year has seen a growing list of Fortune 500 companies announcing that they are dropping race- and gender-based programs for their employees and pulling out of global net zero climate clubs.

Companies that have announced they are canceling or dialing back their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs include Meta, Walmart, Ford, McDonald’s, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Tractor Supply Company, Lowe’s, Molson Coors, Nissan, Toyota, and Stanley Black & Decker.

In addition, within weeks of the 2024 election, six of the largest U.S. banks—Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley—dropped out of the U.N.-sponsored Net-Zero Banking Alliance.

On Jan. 13, the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAMi) announced that it would suspend its activities after investor giant BlackRock announced its withdrawal from the club on Jan. 9. These departures followed in the wake of half of the members of the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance quitting that organization in 2023.

This has led many to conclude that the ESG movement is rapidly coming to an end.

“ESG and DEI are both on death watch,” Daniel Cameron, former Kentucky attorney general and current CEO of the nonprofit 1792 Exchange, told The Epoch Times.

“I think it’s because companies are realizing that a lot of the country just want our corporate community to focus on creating and developing great products and providing great service, rather than pushing or preaching a partisan agenda,” he said.

Republican victories in the November 2024 elections will likely spark more defections from the progressive corporate movement.

“The election of Donald Trump put backers of ESG on notice, and I believe the recent departure by several major banks and asset managers from the U.N.’s anti-fossil fuel cartel confirms that the broader ESG movement is on life-support,” Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) told The Epoch Times.

...

In his former role as state treasurer of West Virginia, Moore was among the first to divest state funds from BlackRock over what he charged was the firm’s support for ESG policies.

The Nasdaq Stock Market on Jan. 16 filed a request with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), seeking to withdraw its 2021 diversity rule after an appeals court recently struck it down.

The Nasdaq rule had required companies listed on the exchange to have at least two “diverse” board members, including “at least one director who self-identifies as a female” and one who “self-identifies as Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Asian, Native American or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, two or more races or ethnicities, or as LGBTQ+.”

Is ESG Good for Companies?

The ESG ideology originated at the United Nations in 2004 as a way to get private companies on board with progressive climate and social goals known as the U.N.’s “Sustainable Development Goals.”

...

The world’s savings and investments are heavily concentrated in the hands of just a few fund managers, the largest of which, called the “Big Three,” are BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, which collectively manage more than $20 trillion in assets largely through their index funds.

By comparison, the United States’ GDP is approximately $29 trillion.

...

Added to this are the United States’ largest municipal retirement funds, including CalPERS, CalSTRS, and New York City and state pension funds, which have also pressured companies to embrace ESG ideology.

These fund managers joined U.N.-sponsored net zero alliances, such as NZAMi and the Net-Zero Banking Alliance—which pledged to reduce the use of fossil fuels—as well as other activist organizations such as Climate Action 100+.

...

The Biden administration also threw its weight behind the ESG movement. In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to “advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in all parts of the Federal workforce.”

In 2022, the U.S. Labor Department altered its rules to allow asset managers of private Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) pensions to consider “climate change and other environmental, social, and governance factors” when investing pension money. Previously, under the first Trump administration, ERISA fund managers could only consider pecuniary factors that would maximize returns to pensioners.

In addition, the SEC in March 2024 implemented what became known as the “green accounting” rule, which required all listed companies to audit and document their “climate-related risks,” their carbon dioxide emissions, and their strategies for reducing them.

...

‘The Beginning of the End’..

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to end DEI throughout the federal government and in federally funded colleges, and in anticipation, the FBI reportedly closed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion in December 2024. The incoming administration is also likely to reverse the SEC’s green accounting rule and reinstate its previous policies that ban non-pecuniary investing of ERISA pension funds.

But according to ESG critics, the ideology still has life in it.

...

“It’s the beginning of the end,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told The Epoch Times. “The momentum has shifted and I don’t see it coming back, but there’s still a lot of work to do.

“Even with BlackRock leaving Net Zero Asset Managers, and [NZAMi] shutting down operations, you still have a number of these firms, including BlackRock, who have not repudiated their firm’s individual commitment to pushing net zero.”

...

“We already saw the customer and employee backlash happen with companies like Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson, etc. Now attention is being placed on legal and regulatory risks, especially with the American Airlines ruling that its 401(k) plans violate ERISA fiduciary duties.”

....

On Jan. 13, a U.S. district court ruled that American Airlines had mishandled its employees’ retirement funds by allowing fund managers to pursue ESG investments.

At the height of the ESG movement, many executives acted in lockstep, seemingly believing that “safety in numbers” shielded them from legal action, analysts said. But with every company that steps away from ESG ideology, those that remain committed are more exposed to employee and investor lawsuits and enforcement actions from federal and state officials,

...

every company that abandons its ESG or DEI policies “makes it harder for the remaining companies to toe the line.”

In December 2023, Skrmetti brought a consumer-protection suit against BlackRock, alleging that the firm had misled Tennessee consumers regarding the extent to which ESG factors affected its investment strategies.

...

The legal risks include violation of civil rights laws, antitrust laws, and consumer protection laws, experts said.

Following the Supreme Court ruling in October 2022 that race-based admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated U.S. civil rights laws, 13 state attorneys general penned a letter to the United States’ largest companies, stating, “the Supreme Court’s recent decision should place every employer and contractor on notice of the illegality of racial quotas and race-based preferences in employment and contracting practices.” The letter warned that “if your company previously resorted to racial preferences or naked quotas to offset its bigotry, that discriminatory path is now definitively closed.”

Corporate attorneys are beginning to push companies to acknowledge and disclose these risks to investors. In its September 2023 10-K filing with the SEC, for example, The Walt Disney Company listed among its risk factors the fact that “consumers’ perceptions of [Disney’s] position on matters of public interest, including ... efforts to achieve certain ... environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to [Disney’s] reputation and brands.”

...

This disclosure followed a significant decline in Disney’s sales and share price following the company’s campaign against a Florida parents’ rights law that barred teachers in grades K–3 from discussing sexual topics with students, as well as revelations that company producers were routinely putting controversial sexual themes into children’s content.

In November 2023, shareholders sued Target and its board of directors, alleging that they “betrayed both Target’s core customer base of working families and its investors by making false and misleading statements about Target’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) mandates that led to its disastrous 2023 children-and-family themed LGBT-Pride campaign.” And in 2023, a white Starbucks employee was awarded $25 million when the company was found to have fired her because of her race.

Companies put themselves at risk with race-based training and other policies, as these practices open them up to employee lawsuits for creating a hostile work environment, Hild said.

“Where were their compliance attorneys on this stuff?” he said. “I think it raises the question of whether a lot of these companies need to take a look at their compliance departments and have some firings on that front.”

Anticipating that the Trump administration will take a tougher approach to enforcing civil rights and antitrust laws regarding ESG, many companies are now racing to get their policies in line with these laws.

“A lot of companies got way out over their skis on this, but the law hasn’t changed,” Skrmetti said. “You’re going to see a lot of litigation going forward, and that’s why I think you’re seeing a lot of companies move very, very quickly to try to get on the right side of the law before the Trump administration begins enforcing these laws that have been on the books for a very long time.

“We are a country of individual Americans, and when you put people in buckets based on something as trivial as the color of their skin and treat some people differently than others, it’s evil,” he said.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: affirmativeaction; blackrock; climate; costco; deere; dei; die; diversity; esg; netzero; vanguard; winning; woke

1 posted on 01/21/2025 9:46:07 AM PST by george76
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To: george76

Which way is the wind blowing today. Had the election gone bad, they’d be doubling their budgets for dei.


2 posted on 01/21/2025 9:48:01 AM PST by rktman (Destroy America from within ? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this💩? 🚫💉! 🇮🇱👍!)
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To: rktman

In a steady parade of companies retreating from their diversity efforts, Costco Wholesale is standing out by holding fast.

Ahead of its annual meeting next week, the warehouse retailer has urged its shareholders to reject a proposal ...

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4291193/posts

Posted on 01/21/2025 9:49:05 AM PST by george76 (Ward Churchill :


3 posted on 01/21/2025 9:49:45 AM PST by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: george76

>> Costco Wholesale is standing out by holding fast

possibly related to the Teamsters’ negotiations


4 posted on 01/21/2025 10:00:25 AM PST by Gene Eric
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To: george76

Saw their union folks just voted to strike. Not for that issue though. 🤔😊👍


5 posted on 01/21/2025 10:00:26 AM PST by rktman (Destroy America from within ? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this💩? 🚫💉! 🇮🇱👍!)
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To: george76

Is net zero climate mean what I think they are saying? If they are aiming for no no climate change, I would think by now they would realize they are just whistling Dixie as I doubt there is much question that it could possibly be done.


6 posted on 01/21/2025 10:54:00 AM PST by oldtech
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To: rktman

“Which way is the wind blowing today. Had the election gone bad, they’d be doubling their budgets for dei.”

well yes, but the fascist bullies who intimidated corporations to institute DEI, ESG, and censorship did NOT get re-elected, so the fascist pressure and intimidation evaporated and the corporations were free to do what they wanted to do without government threats ...

the new Trump administration certainly applied no threats or pressure to private industry to reverse their stances on DEI,ESG or censorship: the Trump administration simply removed the illegal coercion by the FedGov, so now only the hard-core leftist true believers continue with this nonsense ... outfits like wiki and google have continued to censor and costco has continued with DEI ...


7 posted on 01/21/2025 8:38:48 PM PST by catnipman ((A Vote For The Lesser Of Two Evils Still Counts As A Vote For Evil))
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To: george76

Any business that still uses DEI should be sued by anyone that is not hired by that business. DEI is discrimination pure and simple.


8 posted on 01/23/2025 5:15:15 AM PST by CIB-173RDABN (I’ll take a wait and see...)
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